ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Development in Infancy
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2025.1543759
Unintentional Training? Consequences of Naturalistic Parent-guided Positioning
Provisionally accepted
- University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, United States
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Early motor skills are an essential part of healthy development. Previous research has demonstrated that intentional interventions may facilitate the emergence of key motor milestones such as grasping, sitting, crawling, or walking. However, less is known about the impact of less formal and intense practice opportunities on infant motor development. The current study fills this gap by examining the effects of brief, parent-guided postural positioning for the assessment of their infant’s motor behavior. Critically, the parent-guided positioning lasted mere minutes and was not designed as an intervention. A sample of 81 parent-infant dyads participated in a longitudinal remote observation study conducted entirely via video conference. Dyads were divided into a “observed” and an “unobserved” group. The “observed” group experienced a total of 8 parent-guided positioning observations lasting a combined 16 minutes over an 8-week period – just about 2 minutes of positioning experiences per week. The “unobserved” group was not observed and did not experience parent-guided positioning. Comparing infant development between the groups at 6 and 10 months of age, results reveal higher scores in both motor and language domains for infants in the “observed” group. These results demonstrate even brief engagement in new motor skills, or the indirect influence these engagements have on parenting behavior, may have cascading effects on concurrent and subsequent development.
Keywords: Infancy, Motor development, language development, home observations, parent-guided activities, training, Sitting, reaching
Received: 11 Dec 2024; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ran and Libertus. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Klaus Libertus, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, United States
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